This blog was originally intended to be the home for my dark age Britain project but on completion I found blogging such a great inspiration to complete stuff, that I just naturally continued. Please note that as a result of persistent spamming any comments are moderated . Sorry

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Thursday, 8 October 2015

oh those winter nights

We are finally beginning to see a drop in temperature. We are down to the high 20's now and at night there's a definite chill from the Mountains. I can also hear that damn butterfly again. The Napoleonics are quite large now. I can field several corps for both sides and I have maintained focus for over a year.. Unbelievable. I hear my long neglected 15mm ancients calling to me in those moments of inattention. Now it's a real shame to leave them in the cupboards for so long because although painted some 20 years ago they are still quite pretty and were put together at the height of my "everyman different craze" must do something with them.

some of the many I have in cabinets gathering dust.

However what stops me now, as then, is rules. I played DBM to death and was left with the feeling of a " good game but not a lot to do with ancients". Now I look around in the hope of finding something to light my fire. I'm not asking much just.

1/ Simple enough to learn in a couple of hours.
2/ Detailed enough to feel "right" but finish a game in 2 or 3 hours.
3/ not many bases. I really don't like pushing around small bases for hours. I much prefer massed troops a little like my pictures above
4/ Not too many tables and no rosters.

Is this so much to ask?

I need to look at "impetus" and "to the strongest". They sound interesting. I saw "l'Art de la Guerre" last week but as the rulebook resembled the first volume of the encyclopaedia Britannica I decided to give it a miss. There must be many more out there I just need to look around.

4 comments:

Hmmm, a tricky problem you have Robert. Recent experiences have put me off buying rules until I've had a good chance to play them a few times. One of the down sides of not belonging to a club is that inabililty to do this. So if you can find someone who has the rules you may be interested in and then give them a godd run out at least a few times.

Looking at your figures above, could you not use Dux Bellorum as a base, with one of the 'variants' that have been published in Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy?

And as for weather in the high 20's, if only we'd had that in the (alleged) Summer this year.....

yeah I did seriously consider Dux Bellorum but my memory of the development goes back to DAIS (dark age infantry slog) and I find it hard to divorce the ruleset from basically shield wall combat. When I use cavalry I'm not so convinced.

who goes there?

about me

I'm a happily retired veteran wargamer. We have lived here in Cataluña for some 30 odd years. I seldom have live opponents and am quite happy to game solo in all and every period or scale that takes my fancy